Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

When Will Our Childhood Be Over?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If we don’t understand what bestowal is, then how can we work on our faith in the Creator and His greatness?

Answer: We work like children who play with faith as with a toy, and with bestowal as a game. This is called the time of preparation when we deal with the imitation and not with real bestowal; it’s as if we bestow. When through the study we reach such a state, we are already given some serious work.

We are given the powers for that from Above when it’s clear that we will not use them to harm others. Only then are we allowed to bestow. The force of receiving is not dangerous, and I don’t go out of my way because of it. But if I use the force of bestowal incorrectly I can cause great harm.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/13, Writings of Rabash

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A Spiritual Progression

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we turn a person’s intention into the intention of many, into the “prayer of many“?

Answer: There is a big difference. If I think about society, trying to connect with them in order to convey the Light that they expect, it’s called a “prayer of many,” a “public prayer.”

If every individual in the group acts this way, we form the area of the collective general deficiency where everyone, by being included in everyone, already forms a spiritual progression. I think about everyone, you think about everyone, and so does the whole group. Then each one multiplies his intensity by the number of the people for whom he wants to ask for a filling. It turns out that this prayer already becomes a spiritual vessel. The spiritual vessel is a result of the connection. If I pray for you and you pray for me, then each of us includes the other inside him. Then our desires that include one another connect and create a spiritual vessel among them.

This means that the parts of our desires in which I pray for you and you pray for me connect. Their connection becomes a spiritual vessel. The parts in which each one is for oneself remain below.

It turns out that you influence the Light only by your mutual inclusion with each other, where you include him inside you and he includes you inside him. So one person doesn’t operate in spirituality, there have to be at least two, as it says: “The minimum of many is two.” As well, “Either together or death,” which means that either you have a friend with whom you perform a spiritual action or you are dead, and have no chance to draw the Light that Reforms.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/13, The Zohar

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A Temporary Retreat In Order To Leap Ahead Once Again

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Sometimes by revealing the ego inside me, I feel that I can’t get rid of it; that I can’t attain the goal.

Answer: That’s true. But this is already the next level. For example, I brought a friend a present yesterday and I thought that I really loved him and that I was so devoted to him.  And today I discover what I did not understand yesterday: It turns out that I did this since I calculated things for my own benefit. Yesterday I couldn’t see my thought to the end; I couldn’t discern my desire; only my love toward the friend was revealed to me. And now it turns out that I was pursing my self-interest in this love.

Thus, what was concealed from me yesterday is revealed today, so what should I do now?

First, I don’t regret what happened yesterday. I did what I did according to my powers, and it’s thanks to my action that I reveal the next level today, a thicker desire, which is much deeper with an intention of in order to receive for myself. So what? Now I approach the correction.

This happens time after time, and so it says, “What is waste for the upper is food for the lower.” Now I try to make efforts to adapt myself to the upper, and he presents me with an example, “Look, this is Me, you can be like Me, which means not using the vessels of receiving, restricting them, and adhering to Me, doing your best to act like Me.”

This means that I restrict my AHP, and adhere to His AHP with my GE, and thus rise. First, I must isolate my GE from my AHP. I annul it and perform the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph – ZA) on it and use only the vessels of bestowal toward the AHP of the upper.

If we become equal, my GE and His AHP becomes ten Sefirot. By that I adhere to the upper and “enter” Him, and am now called an “embryo (Ubar),” and the upper AHP becomes a womb for me. Thus I constantly rise to Him by increasingly annulling myself time after time.

Question: But it is precisely in that moment that I usually want to escape from the group. How can I stay in it? How can I continue the work despite everything?

Answer: I can only say one thing: Your urge to escape from the group indicates that the Creator, the Light, shows you several additional desires by which you can now enter the upper. However, without these interruptions you couldn’t penetrate Him. So now you develop the right attitude toward Him.

The escape is also necessary since otherwise you wouldn’t feel the additional desire. You have to feel the additional desire, to regret it, to come back to the group again, and to start working in order to receive the Light that corrects the desire. When you correct the additional desire, you are incorporated in the upper again. Such a circle should be drawn.

Suppose you adhere to the upper, but you haven’t entered the upper yet. Now comes a certain interruption: (Boom!), and from the blow that you receive on the head you forget everything. This happens so that you will make the whole circle, connect to the group again, return to the starting point again, and continue.

Thus you “digest” the desire that has awoken that throws you in different directions. Suddenly you don’t come to the lessons or don’t use your spare time purposefully (you go to the cinema instead of disseminating). You have to feel the heavy desire that you received (+), regret it (-), and turn to the group. Then, when the group influences you by the Light that Reforms (O”M) you decide to adhere to the upper again, no matter what.

Eventually you return, having acquired a greater power that enables you to overcome the interruption, you enter the upper, like an embryo, and adhere to the “wall of the womb.”

So after the theoretical explanations, only a strong united group can help you, only in it can you advance. Accordingly, a person who lives far away from the friends should worry about that even more.

It’s not good if a person has to be in contact with friends over great distances; it’s even worse if he can’t listen to lessons live, and what’s even worse is if he is not part of a group. One should constantly make sure that the interruptions in the connection between us should be beneficial and not harmful.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Shamati #9

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Eternal Harmony

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we come to a state of balance between the men’s and women’s groups so that men meet the interests of the women’s group and there is harmony between them?

Answer: There can only be harmony if both groups connect to the Creator together, not in measuring themselves one relative to the other. Only this way! There will be no harmony anywhere, not in the family, not anywhere else, if the Creator does not fill the gap between the two objects.
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From the Virtual Lesson 1/20/13

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Becoming The Creator’s Student

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn a person’s attitude to the Creator, we first must develop the importance of the upper inside us, which is called “make yourself a Rav,” so that the Creator becomes great in our eyes. Now He is concealed and we don’t feel that He is important. And to the extent that we gain faith in the Creator, although we don’t see Him, but  we develop the feeling of His importance with the help of the group, the Creator seems great to us. Then we are ready to do all manner of actions in order to connect to Him. This is all our work with the Creator.

I come to the group, begin to study, listen, and get a chance to discover the upper reality. In the meantime it is concealed from me and I don’t feel it, don’t understand, don’t see anything, but I already have an urge for it, which is not quite clear yet, and I want to fulfill it.

It is hard for me to live without fulfilling this urge; I feel that life is empty and meaningless. Everything that I have has lost its meaning and has become tasteless. I am told that I don’t feel the Creator since my attributes are opposite from His, as I have certain attributes in my current reality that I have not chosen.

According to these attributes I perceive the reality according to the law of equivalence of form. We know that it is possible to perceive a certain wavelength only by the right detector. I see colors and hear sounds only according to my senses that can perceive and discover them because they have the same attributes as the observed phenomenon. Everything is according to equivalence of form.

So according to my attributes, I perceive only a tiny fragment of the world that is before me. This fragment is the world that I feel and see. There can be millions of other phenomena around me that I don’t perceive, since I haven’t developed the feeling and senses for them.

This entire reality is called the “Creator.” He created this whole reality, but He shows me only a small fragment of it in which I can live and develop independently in order to discover and to feel Him.

I develop my senses by myself, and so I understand what I do and what I feel. Thus it becomes my system because I develop my own system by myself by developing and improving myself. By this, I build the Creator’s image inside me, until I feel all of reality completely. This will mean that I have recreated the image of the whole external reality, the image of the Creator, inside me. Therefore I am called Adam, a whole human, that resembles (Domeh) the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Writings of Rabash

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The Instructional Part Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is never revealed to us in advance what we have to do and how to do it. The Creator is concealed, His system is concealed, and I am given several means with which I can try to recreate the system inside me. I am only given a certain part of the Creator’s system as an example and asked to create it by myself. Then I discover that I have the exact opposite attributes with respect to the properties that I have to create. But this is also help, since I am shown the exact oppositeness! I have to find this oppositeness, to understand and feel it, and from the opposite property to guess the right attribute.

This means that I learn why I am corrupted this way and why I must agree to the opposite despite my reluctance. In order to do this, I have to annul myself, lower my importance and to increase the importance of the Creator. I am in a struggle and don’t agree to trample on myself.

For example, there are people whom I hate the most, who have caused me so many problems, that I don’t want to see and who ignite anger in me when I see them. Now I have to develop a different attitude toward them, the opposite attitude. I begin to discover that my intentions are opposite from the intentions that are presented to me as desirable.

I am brought to the group and told to connect with them and to love them. If I begin to love them, I will correct my perception and my senses and will calibrate myself to the feeling and the revelation of the Creator. I can feel Him in my friends, in this corrected relationship that I create. Instead of the friends, I will feel the Creator. There are no friends; there is only the Creator.

All this is thanks to the fact that I have broken my ego and inverted it, twisted it inside out, by having changed my attitude towards my enemies from hate to love, from rejection to connection. But I do all that in order to build a system of compatibility to the upper force. By developing and increasing the Creator’s importance in order to bring Him contentment without any connection to myself, I bring Him contentment in a way that He doesn’t even see me, just as I don’t see Him now. He doesn’t feel that it comes from me, just as I don’t feel that everything comes from Him. It is as if He, as if, ignores me, just as I neglect Him now because of the concealment and by that He lets me feel that I really conceal myself. I am ready for Him to ignore me and that He wouldn’t know anything about me, since then my bestowal, my attitude toward Him will be just like His attitude toward me, according to the way it seems to me now.

By all this we learn the right attitude toward the Creator above our corrupt desire. This means that we correct our desire and our attitude and by that attain bestowal. This means that we develop the feeling of the importance of the Creator in order to connect to Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Writings of Rabash

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Popcorn Syndrome

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion:  When the addition of ego rejects and throws us off the goal, we go to the group to receive help. At the same time, how can we not erase or extinguish this new situation? Because it needs to bring us benefit.

Answer: It depends on the group: it should be like a commando, it needs to value the toil.

Question: What out of all this depends on me?

Answer: I am happy about my connection with the group, and I am sorry that I am not yet in adhesion with the upper. You need to imagine the desired state and then the lack of being in conformity with the current reality inside you; you will invite sorrow that should later become pangs of love.

Let’s assume that I attained some spiritual state, and then what we call, “I hit my head” and suddenly I forgot the goal and found myself some place, in the movie theatre. I enjoy eating popcorn, drinking Coke, and seeing an interesting movie; this is not suffering, but pleasure from disconnection from the main thing. Moreover, I enjoy not only beastly pleasures, but rather that I’m disconnected from spirituality.

But then the lack of meaning in my life again reminds me of His existence, and I begin to return. I go back to the group again, listen to the friends, and annul myself to them from lack of choice until they again begin to influence me with the importance of the Creator, the importance of the goal. They wash my brain with blatant propaganda that is mixed with a lie, but I intentionally go through all this and eventually the goal becomes important to me.

Then I receive with love everything I experience: the forgetfulness, the pleasure at the movie theatre, and the descent of the value of spirituality in my eyes. Whether I want it or not, this comes from the Creator and I had to go through this in order to be corrected.

Now I begin to collect inside me other sufferings, torments of love, because I as if want to reach adhesion and connection, but meanwhile I don’t have even suffering for that, I am still not even sorry that I am not there, I don’t have a real deficiency or even a lack for the deficiency. I only have a tiny bud of something, and from this great distance, I begin the path.

The question that arises is: What am I suffering from? That the Creator, so to speak, is rejecting and throwing me out? Or that that I still did not achieve the goal? And here the main thing is to worry that my suffering will always be sweet. Because whatever happens, I receive everything from the Creator; therefore, every state needs to be justified and joined to the goal where all these situations receive sweetening and correction.

Baal HaSulam writes in Letter 5: I am glad in those revealed corruptions and those that are being revealed. How much I complain and I regret the corruptions that still are not yet revealed, and will be revealed, because corruption that is concealed is hopeless, and a big salvation from Heaven is its revelation.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Shamati #9 

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Life Seems Like A Moment, Or A Moment Seems Like A Lifetime

Dr. Michael LaitmanAs it is written, “Make yourself a Rav and buy yourself a friend.” It refers to the types of connections that we can reach between us and between us and the Creator. Our correction from the shattering depends on this connection. To the extent that we connect and leap over the shattering and correct it, then, in the corrected vessels, in the connection between them, we discover the spiritual reality.

In the corporeal reality, we live in our desire until we fulfill the corporeal Reshimot (spiritual genes) on the animate level. When one Reshimo exhausts itself and another one comes along, we feel it as our death, and the birth of the new Reshimo is called another life, a new “reincarnation.”

However, we constantly can renew the spiritual Reshimot by correcting the connection between us each time. If a person understands that he can fulfill these spiritual Reshimot, can clarify and correct them, then, in the corrected Reshimot, he feels his next level of existence, which means the spiritual life.

Corporeal life is fulfilled by one Reshimo on the animate level, and, when it is completely fulfilled—which means that it goes through the phases of Ibur (gestation), Yenika (suckling), and Mochin (mind)—a person dies. However, on the level of “speaking,” we can fulfill many Reshimot by constantly changing them; we can feel our advancement in them toward the attainment of the spiritual world.

In contrast to the corporeal world that is felt in the corporeal Reshimo, the spiritual world is felt in the corrected spiritual Reshimot, which means in the connection between us. It turns out that we are living in two worlds simultaneously: in the corporeal Reshimo, in feeling our body, and in the corrupt spiritual Reshimot by feeling the corrupt connection between us.

If we correct this connection, then, in the corrected Reshimot, we discover the spiritual level; instead of a shattered world, we feel the corrected world. Accordingly, we feel the new corrected desires and, in them, the Light that fills them according to their level of correction.

So, the only thing we need is to provide the basic necessities, the minimal existence for the Reshimot on the animate level, and to advance as quickly as possible by correcting the Reshimot on the level of the “speaking.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Writings of Rabash 

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The Women’s Group Is Beyond Hierarchies

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Due to recent changes (from the women’s convention), a big importance of women’s unity has emerged.

There are women who are more active and less active in our group. For the active women, we organize certain activities and separate workshops, thereby creating a few circles in the women’s community. As a result, there are many unhappy women who think that we have split this community. Is it right to do this in the women’s group?

Answer: I believe it is incorrect. The mass should be as uniform as possible. I do not divide anyone. Some women participate less, no matter for what reason, some more.  I never look for reasons, especially if we are talking about women, not men. Men can be pressed, but women should not be, and in general, women should be treated as equal to men. But they must not make any divisions between themselves. Absolutely no!

Question: So, on what principle could the women’s group be formed?

Answer: According to the principle of the circle—everyone is equal. If I want to advance towards spirituality, I do not need earthly levels: What honors I would be rewarded, how many stars they attach to me? What is important for me is spiritual ascent, and I do not ask anything for myself. If it is possible to invest my efforts, I invest them, if there is no opportunity, then there is none. But a person should wait for the highest reward for his invested efforts, rather than have power and position in the group. What for? This is incorrect!

There are people who have organizational skills; it is another matter. We appoint them to be responsible for this or that because we benefit if they are engaged in these duties or something else, but in any case, we should not divide the group.

We have people who work very hard for the group. So what? Are they supposed to get more? For what reason?

As for women, they are mostly not free; they have a husband, family, children, and parents. So, we cannot demand the same things from them as from men.
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From the Virtual Lesson 1/20/13

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Efforts Every Minute

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: During the workshops and lessons at the Arava convention was the first time I was awarded with strong hatred for the group. It is difficult to overcome. How can I work with this; is it through work in the intervals between the congresses or work during the congresses? In other words, when we face this at a convention, do we overcome this by means of our work in between the congresses and there must be a constant effort to control oneself?

Answer: The effort should be in place. You need to prepare for falls in advance. There is nothing wrong with them. On the contrary, you need to meet these states with joy, despite the fact that you feel, “How can it be? I don’t want that!” This inner struggle is very good and essential.

In any case, do not try to remove it, do not erase it, but also do not dwell on it inside, do not beat yourself up, but rise above it correctly. It should be understood, in spite of feeling hatred, that the Creator sent it so that I recognize my egoism, how much more it is revealed in me now, and that is why, instead of love and agreement with the group, I feel hatred; I must rise above it and ask the Creator to help me. Don’t try to rise and get out of the pit you fell into by yourself, but ask the Creator to help you get out of it together with Him. Then you will have some contact with Him. This is why He arranged this fall for you.

We need to prepare for falls. Our workshops are especially good preparation for them.
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From the Virtual Lesson 1/20/13

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